We’ve spent the last month purging our stuff so we could move out of the home we were renting in Ridgefield and into our motorhome.

And man, talk about a PROJECT!

It’s been a ton of work. And kudos to Lacie for bearing the brunt of the work. I’ve been busy with a couple big copywriting projects this last month so Lacie has been the one doing most of the “purging.”

I’m grateful I married a woman with sisu! When a BIG project needs to get done there’s no one better to have on you team than Lacie Joy! 🙂

I also want to give a shout out to Loretta Hahn for being such a big help during this process! You rock Loretta. Thank you for all your help!

So here’s what we did in the last 4 weeks to purge our stuff so we could get in our RV and travel the country for at least 3 months:

How We Purged Our Stuff

We went through ALL our stuff and decided to either:

Donate it

Trash it

Store it, or

Take it

We started by having a garage sale and got rid of a bunch of stuff that way. Here’s a video of all our stuff (including 1 million kids clothing items!):

And here are some pics from the garage sale:

Our Garage Sale – Day 2

Sold my big brown desk!

Sold this table and chairs to our neighbor.

Aftermath of the Garage Sale.

We also sold several things on Craigslist and Facebook, like my rowing machine, our big standup freezer and other stuff.

We also took 3-4 minivan loads of stuff to the Goodwill and about the same amount of loads to the dump.

It’s amazing how much you can cram in a minivan!

Another car load of stuff.

Had to include a big version of this pic cause Lily is so darn cute!

Felt Good to Downsize

It felt good, and freeing, to get rid of so much crap. It makes me want to become more of a minimilist and think twice before buying stuff we don’t need.

I realized stuff just weighs you down.

We didn’t get rid of everything though. We stored our nice furniture (the sofa, leather chair and bed) at Lacie’s sister, Loretta’s, house. As well as about 4 boxes full of my books and journals (books have been the hardest thing for me to let go. I got rid of probably 15% of them but I’m just not ready to give them up yet!). See video below about this:

I also did not get rid of my hockey gear and snowboard. I wanted to take them with us but Lacie convinced me they would take up too much room. So they got stored too.

And finally we got our house empty!

Empty! Hooray!

Into the Motorhome!

Everything else we packed in our motorhome!

And so last night once we got everything out of the house Lacie asked if we could just get in the RV and drive it up to her parent’s house in Yacolt.

I was thinking we could just sleep in the RV and leave it parked outside but Lacie really wanted to get in and go! And I understood.

It just felt good to “depart” from the house and finally hit the road. Even if that meant simply driving 45 minutes across the county at 10:00 pm.

So we packed the kids in and since they didn’t have any naps (Benji may have had one) they quickly fell asleep as soon as I hit the road.

Lacie followed behind in the minivan and we were talking to each other on the phone.

“How does it feel to know everything you own is in that motorhome,” she asked.

“Feels pretty good,” I said.

The next morning when Emma woke up Lacie said, “Hey come here, I have a surprise for you.”

She opened the window next to her bunk bed so Emma could look out.

Here we are now. Parked in Yacolt as we prepare to hit the road!

“Are we actually at Ginny House Day’s House (Emma if you reading this when you’re older this is what you called Lacie’s mom and dad’s house)?”

“Yep.”

Emma screamed and started jumping around talking about how this was the best surprise.

I smiled and thought to myself, this is going to be fun. Driving to new places and watching how excited the kids get.

I expect this to be a great adventure. So I want to document this and start writing on this blog on a regular basis. That way our friends and family can keep up with our crazy adventure of living in a motorhome for the next several months with 3 kids.

But also, so our kids can pull this up 20 years from now and read about what they were doing when they were 4, 2 and 1 years old.

Well, it’s 11:08 pm and I’m tired now. All the kids are sleeping, Emma on the top bunk, Lily on the bottom and Benji is in the pack n play at the foot of our bed.

Tomorrow I want to spend some more time planning out route across the country. It’s super hot everywhere so I want to navigate around the heat as best we can. We’re considering heading down the coast to San Diego area but we may do something else. We’ll see!

4 Comments

So happy for you! When we “purged”, it was in preparation for moving overseas. It really, really did feel good, and it leaves me wondering: if it feels so good to get rid of things, why in the world do we accumulate in the first place?
We will be watching for your updates” we hope you fully enjoy yourselves.

That’s a great question: why do we feel we need more stuff if it feels so good to get rid of it? I’m so happy we downsized. It’s got me thinking how we can make this more of a long-term lifestyle even after we move back into a house. I would much rather spend money on experiences and travel then more stuff.